EMI

One of those media conglomerates, founded in 1931. Not just a record company - EMI stands for "Electric and Musical Industries", and they have been involved in broadcasting and the military, et al. They bought Capitol Records, and Lord Grade's agency. Immortalized in the Sex Pistols' "EMI", having been one of the many labels that signed-and-declined the band. They were bought by Thorn Industries, and became "Thorn EMI" for a while; they also own the HMV chain of retailers. (to be continued)

During more than 5 years, I worked for EMI-ODEON S.A (part of EMI Iberica, which included operations for Portugal and Spain). At that time, EMI was a very conservativerecord company, and at EMI Spain, I've met some of the worst management that I can recall. Back in 1995, I asked for a computer (yes, I was working without computer at work when I had two in home) and an Internet connection, in order to streamline the process of sending artist's bios and pictures, with a dedicated FTP server the journalist could use to download stuff, and a distribution list to inform the press of news about our artist. The response was NO.

I always get that damn feeling that nobody takes you seriously, and look now, everybody is going nuts trying to make some money of Internet... (see AOL-TimeWarner-EMI)